MSF Issues In-Depth Report On R&D And Drug Prices

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctor Without Borders) today announced a report detailing failings in the current system for developing new drugs in ways that all patients can afford and access, and providing proposed policy options for addressing the problems.

The 56-page report is entitled, “Lives on the Edge: Time to Align Medical Research and Development with People’s Health Needs.”

“In this report, MSF illustrates how our staff and patients around the world are impacted by the way biomedical research and development (R&D) is predominantly conducted today. The report also looks at a broad range of policies aimed at changing this dynamic by incentivising the development of medical tools that truly respond to patient and public health needs, and ensuring they are made broadly accessible,” a press statement says.

The substantive discussion of policy options include greater transparency on R&D costs; changing the incentives; setting priorities, coordinating efforts and ensuring sustainable financing; and government action. The report includes an analysis of how much it really costs to develop a drug, looking into recently asserted claims of massive expenditure to come up with a single product.

The report comes on the opening day of a World Health Organization committee meeting on alternative financing for medical R&D. The open-ended meeting of the Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination (CEWG) is meeting from 2-4 May at WHO (IPW, Public Health, 26 April 2016). The CEWG meeting is closed to press.